Assessing the Accessibility of LinkedIn
-LinkedIn Accessibility Evaluation-
Team
3 Designers
Roles
WCAG Evaluation, Design Annotations, Cognitive Evaluation
OVERVIEW
LinkedIn is a professional networking platform connecting individuals and businesses worldwide. The platform is widely used for recruiting, business networking, and staying informed about industry trends.
As LinkedIn is a company that is consciously practicing accessible designs, the intention was to understand its effectiveness and identify any gaps that could help make it more accessible to it's users who have cognitive disabilities.
BRIEF
To evaluate the experience on LinkedIn to assess the accessibility(a11y) for users with a cognitive disability.
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Part 1
WCAG Evaluation
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG evaluates a website or web application to ensure its compliance with the WCAG standards, which promote accessibility for people with disabilities.
These four principles are known by the acronym POUR for perceivable, operable, understandable and robust.
For the sake of this exercise, only the failures have been mentioned.
Part 2
Cognitive Walkthrough
A cognitive Walkthrough exercise was performed after selecting a persona, Powel who has Asperger's syndrome and anxiety.
The objective of the evaluation was to identify any problems for the user while performing tasks. The following questions were considered to understand the user behavior better.
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- Will the user understand what things are and how to use them?
- ​Will the user be able to find what they need?
- ​Will the user be able to clearly understand the content?
- ​Will the user be able to avoid or correct mistakes?
- ​Will the user have trouble focusing on their task?
- ​Will the user have to remember anything from a previous step?
- ​Will the user be able to get help or support if they run into a problem?
Part 3
Design Annotations
The goal of wireframe annotations is to make the understanding of how and why something on the screen should work as clear as possible to anyone viewing your wireframes. This will allow the development of your product to be accessible and utilized by devices like screen readers.
Conclusion
Although not specified in this project, LinkedIn has many features and conscious decisions that have been made to help the website be more accessible.
This project has emphasized the importance of accessibility in the digital space. There is no design that will solve all problems, but we can always try to make sure each iteration gets us closer to the perfect one.